How Excessive government killed Ancient Rome

[Setzer]

http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cjv14n2-7.html

I thought I'd post this and see what you all thought. However, I did notice that they made no mention of the civil wars during the third century, which only counts as excessive government if you're Voluntaryist.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Eh? I haven't read the article, but the impression I got was that one of the things that killed Rome wasn't excessive governance, but the collapse of governance which incidentally hobbled inter-city trade.

Apparently, someone again forgot the Eastern Empire survived in part because of its relatively efficient administration.

Thanas can probably provide a better refute.

[Samuel]

The Roman Empire was characterized by an extremely weak bureaucracy- the Romans just required individual cities to pay their taxes, maintain order, respect the Gods and provide troops. It didn't have enough individuals in government to do much more regulation.

Didn't other empires of similar size operate the same way in the ancient world?

Anyway, article:

The burden of taxation was significantly lifted by the abolition of tax farming and the regularization of taxation

Er... that means the government changed how they were collecting taxes and made the posts more stable, not reducing the amount that was being taxed.

It was his strong desire to encourage growth and establish a solid middle class (bourgeoisie), which he saw as the backbone of the Empire.

?

Of course, economic freedom was not universal. Egypt, which was the personal property of the Roman emperor, largely retained its socialist economic system

That isn't socialism- that is a monopoly.

Increasingly, emperors came to believe that the army was the sole source of power and they concentrated their efforts on sustaining the army at all cost.

No shit. It wouldn't be because Augustus rose to power on the backs of his troops, just like almost every dynasty after him?

The problem with the article is that it blames the government for trying to collect more revenue... and forgets to mention that it needed the money. What was the state supposed to do? Lay down and die before the barbarians?

At this point, they no longer had any incentive to pillage, but rather sought to provide peace and stability in the areas they controlled.

No- their incentive was to pillage their neighbors.

After all, the wealthier their subjects the greater their taxpaying capacity.

Or you kill all the wealthy, take their stuff and exploit the fact that the citizens have no where to go because Europe has turned into a warzone between minor nobles. You know- the feudalism that proceded to develop across the continent?

Although the final demise of the Roman Empire in the West (its Eastern half continued on as the Byzantine Empire) was an event of great historical importance, for most Romans it was a relief.

Bullshit. You had vast armies of barbarians moving. Even if they weren't bloodthirsty, the trade networks break down as the empire disentigrates, the fields are pillaged for food, the best land is taken for the invaders, the infrastructure falls apart as you no longer have anyone maintaining it, etc.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

A quick glance of the article, and especially that last line, reveals its utter hilarity and simply discredits it. I suppose a plunge in average lifespan, and the loss of sanitation and the collapse of law and order and the collapse of a monetary system would even so much as justify the collapse of the taxation system.

Moreover, I seem to recall that the Emperors tended to have absolute power over the nobility, so much so that the Senate was pretty much a mouthpiece rather an actual political body of worth. Why would the nobility dare to not pay taxes to the Emperor?

[Stark]

Sam, the article appears to have a powerful agenda, so you shouldn't be surprised with the overuse of 'socialism'. They don't mention it (which is good) but the article reads to me as less about Rome than about the Evils of Taxation. These are relevant issues, but the tone is very interesting. I haven't read on the late empire for a long time so I doubt I'm qualified to comment, however.

[Edi]

It's cato.org, what do you expect? A neoconservative stinktank that will use any flimsy or outright fabricated excuse to pontificate about the evils of socialism and the supremacy of the free market. Anything they write should be assumed to be false unless they can actually back it up with tangible evidence, that's how reliable they are.

The article is a carefully constructed crock of shit that is not worth the paper required to print it. If anyone wants to learn about Rome, pick up a fucking history book.

[Thanas]

That article gives me an aneurysm.

As an aside - anyone who really wants to know about the roman economy can look at the excellent essay by Richard P. Duncan-Jones, Economic Change and the Transition to Late Antiquity, in: Simon Swain / Mark Edwards (eds.), Approaching Late Antiquity. The Transformation from Early to Late Empire, Oxford University Press 2004.

First, I'll start off by saying that the person who wrote it is Bruce Bartlett. Bartlett is no real ancient historian. He studied American diplomatic history and his master thesis was on Pearl Harbor. So what we have here is an article by someone who never really studied ancient history, but instead limited his interest in a very narrow time period that has nothing to do with the subject. I also love how he talks about socialism - that concept was not invented yet. I also love that he only once cites an original source (Lactantius), who is not really the best source for economics and especially not for his enemy Diocletian. His bibliography reveals that he only uses secondary sources (except for Lactantius), revealing a deep infamiliarity with the subject matter.

He thinks the fall of the Roman empire is due to a single issue instead of a compley myriad of factors. Here is a hint - no professional ancient historian can cite a single cause why the empire fell. There are over 1000 competing theories on the subject. But of course Bruce Bartlett, who has not written a single paper on ancient history in a peer-reviewed journal has accomplished what countless specialists could not. Let us all praise his inspiration and vision.

A more detailed review is spoilerized.
Spoiler

But, let's start.

Beginning with the third century B.C. Roman economic policy started to contrast more and more sharply with that in the Hellenistic world, especially Egypt. In Greece and Egypt economic policy had gradually become highly regimented, depriving individuals of the freedom to pursue personal profit in production or trade, crushing them under a heavy burden of oppressive taxation, and forcing workers into vast collectives where they were little better than bees in a great hive.

Note that when the same thing happened in the institution known as latifundia, he later calls it free market policies by Augustus.

The later Hellenistic period was also one of almost constant warfare, which, together with rampant piracy, closed the seas to trade. The result, predictably, was stagnation.

Stagnation bred weakness in the states of the Mediterranean, which partially explains the ease with which Rome was able to steadily expand its reach beginning in the 3rd century B.C. By the first century B.C., Rome was the undisputed master of the Mediterranean. However, peace did not follow Rome's victory, for civil wars sapped its strength.

Note how he gives no single cite for this? That might be because his theory is quite clearly wrong. Yes, pirates were a problem. However they did not close sea lanes. In fact, in the third century we see a rapid expansion of sea trade (for example, the zink trade from Britain to Spain to Carthage etc).

So in short, his whole premise is false.

Free-Market Policies under Augustus

Following the murder of Caesar in 44 B.C., his adopted son Octavian finally brought an end to internal strife with his defeat of Mark Antony in the battle of Actium in 31 B.C. Octavian's victory was due in no small part to his championing of Roman economic freedom against the Oriental despotism of Egypt represented by Antony, who had fled to Egypt and married Cleopatra in 36 B.C. As Oertel (1934: 386) put it, "The victory of Augustus and of the West meant . . . a repulse of the tendencies towards State capitalism and State socialism which might have come to fruition . . . had Antony and Cleopatra been victorious."

Notice how he uses a very old cite. The reason? Nobody really thinks this is true anymore. Economic freedom played no part in Octavian's victory. Also, he used the same policies towards Egypt as Antony did...but somehow he is the champion of economic freedom? Augustus, who first centralized the Roman supply system via state run guilds?

The long years of war, however, had taken a heavy toll on the Roman economy. Steep taxes and requisitions of supplies by the army, as well as rampant inflation and the closing of trade routes, severely depressed economic growth. Above all, businessmen and traders craved peace and stability in order to rebuild their wealth. Increasingly, they came to believe that peace and stability could only be maintained if political power were centralized in one man. This man was Octavian, who took the name Augustus and became the first emperor of Rome in 27 B.C., serving until 14 A.D.

Although the establishment of the Roman principate represented a diminution of political freedom, it led to an expansion of economic freedom. [1] Augustus clearly favored private enterprise, private property, and free trade (Oertel 1934: 386; Walbank 1969: 23). The burden of taxation was significantly lifted by the abolition of tax farming and the regularization of taxation (Rostovtzeff 1957: 48).

....tax farming was used throughout the empire, but it was now conducted via Imperial Governors. Remember the statement about Varus that he entered one province as a poor man and left it as a rich man? But clearly, tax farming is more liberal when the state does it instead of private individuals contracted by the state.

And taxation was regularized...yeah. That makes it sound as if there was a national tax code. There was not.

Peace brought a revival of trade and commerce, further encouraged by Roman investments in good roads and harbors.

...what he neglects to mention is that the roads were state run and the harbors were mainly used for state functions like doling out the socialist corn dole.

Except for modest customs duties (estimated at 5 percent), free trade ruled throughout the Empire. It was, in Michael Rostovtzeff's words, a period of "almost complete freedom for trade and of splendid opportunities for private initiative" (Rostovtzeff 1957: 54).

Tiberius, Rome's second emperor (14-37 A.D.), extended the policies of Augustus well into the first century A.D. It was his strong desire to encourage growth and establish a solid middle class (bourgeoisie), which he saw as the backbone of the Empire.

Source?

Oertel (1939: 232) describes the situation:

The first century of our era witnessed a definitely high level of economic prosperity, made possible by exceptionally favorable conditions. Within the framework of the Empire, embracing vast territories in which peace was established and communications were secure, it was possible for a bourgeoisie to come into being whose chief interests were economic, which maintained a form of economy resting on the old city culture and characterized by individualism and private enterprise, and which reaped all the benefits inherent in such a system. The State deliberately encouraged this activity of the bourgeoisie, both directly through government protection and its liberal economic policy, which guaranteed freedom of action and an organic growth on the lines of "laissez faire, laissez aller," and directly through measures encouraging economic activity.

Of course, economic freedom was not universal. Egypt, which was the personal property of the Roman emperor, largely retained its socialist economic system (Rostovtzeff 1929, Milne 1927). However, even here some liberalization did occur. Banking was deregulated, leading to the creation of many private banks (Westermann 1930: 52).

Some land was privatized and the state monopolies were weakened, thus giving encouragement to private enterprise even though the economy remained largely nationalized. [2]

One cannot really call the curiales burgeois. You simply can't. Also, the weakening of state monopolies was due to coming down from a war economy. And Augustus really did expand many state monopolies. For example, most mines were Imperial property.

The reason why Egypt retained its special economic system and was not allowed to share in the general economic freedom of the Roman Empire is that it was the main source of Rome's grain supply. Maintenance of this supply was critical to Rome's survival, especially due to the policy of distributing free grain (later bread) to all Rome's citizens which began in 58 B.C. By the time of Augustus, this dole was providing free food for some 200,000 Romans. The emperor paid the cost of this dole out of his own pocket, as well as the cost of games for entertainment, principally from his personal holdings in Egypt. The preservation of uninterrupted grain flows from Egypt to Rome was, therefore, a major task for all Roman emperors and an important base of their power (Rostovtzeff 1957: 145).

The free grain policy evolved gradually over a long period of time and went through periodic adjustment. [3] The genesis of this practice dates from Gaius Gracchus, who in 123 B.C. established the policy that all citizens of Rome were entitled to buy a monthly ration of corn at a fixed price. The purpose was not so much to provide a subsidy as to smooth out the seasonal fluctuations in the price of corn by allowing people to pay the same price throughout the year.

Under the dictatorship of Sulla, the grain distributions were ended in approximately 90 B.C. By 73 B.C., however, the state was once again providing corn to the citizens of Rome at the same price. In 58 B.C., Clodius abolished the charge and began distributing the grain for free. The result was a sharp increase in the influx of rural poor into Rome, as well as the freeing of many slaves so that they too would qualify for the dole. By the time of Julius Caesar, some 320,000 people were receiving free grain, a number Caesar cut down to about 150,000, probably by being more careful about checking proof of citizenship rather than by restricting traditional eligibility. [4]

Under Augustus, the number of people eligible for free grain increased again to 320,000. In 5 B.C., however, Augustus began restricting the distribution. Eventually the number of people receiving grain stabilized at about 200,000. Apparently, this was an absolute limit and corn distribution was henceforth limited to those with a ticket entitling them to grain. Although subsequent emperors would occasionally extend eligibility for grain to particular groups, such as Nero's inclusion of the Praetorian guard in 65 A.D., the overall number of people receiving grain remained basically fixed.

The distribution of free grain in Rome remained in effect until the end of the Empire, although baked bread replaced corn in the 3rd century. Under Septimius Severus (193-211 A.D.) free oil was also distributed. Subsequent emperors added, on occasion, free pork and wine. Eventually, other cities of the Empire also began providing similar benefits, including Constantinople, Alexandria, and Antioch (Jones 1986: 696-97).

Note how he basically admits the existence of an efficient state-based socialist welfare system but does not call it that?Furthermore he neglects to mention that in the fourth century pork and wine was standard for Rome. Why does he neglect it? Because it does not fit in with his worldview of a declining Roman Economy.

His statement is also quite disputed on a factual basis, but I won't go into that. Instead, I will focus on the last Jones cite. It is quite dishonest to make it appear as if this practice was limited to the time after Severus when it blossomed about 100+years later. And it is dishonest to cite Jones in such a fashion.

Nevertheless, despite the free grain policy, the vast bulk of Rome's grain supply was distributed through the free market. There are two main reasons for this. First, the allotment of free grain was insufficient to live on. Second, grain was available only to adult male Roman citizens, thus excluding the large number of women, children, slaves, foreigners, and other non-citizens living in Rome. Government officials were also excluded from the dole for the most part. Consequently, there remained a large private market for grain which was supplied by independent traders (Casson 1980).

Which has nothing to do with the existence of a free corn dole, which fed (in modern eyes) unproductive citizens and later on was quite enough to feed them (something he also does not mention). From the looks of his summary one would not get the idea that the average citizen of Rome received per head about 2-3 liters of wine a day. In the fourth century, mind you.

The expansion of the dole is an important reason for the rise of Roman taxes. In the earliest days of the Republic Rome's taxes were quite modest, consisting mainly of a wealth tax on all forms of property, including land, houses, slaves, animals, money and personal effects. The basic rate was just .01 percent, although occasionally rising to .03 percent. It was assessed principally to pay the army during war. In fact, afterwards the tax was often rebated (Jones 1974: 161). It was levied directly on individuals, who were counted at periodic censuses.

As Rome expanded after the unification of Italy in 272 B.C., so did Roman taxes. In the provinces, however, the main form of tax was a tithe levied on communities, rather than directly on individuals. [5] This was partly because censuses were seldom conducted, thus making direct taxation impossible, and also because it was easier to administer. Local communities would decide for themselves how to divide up the tax burden among their citizens (Goffart 1974: 11).

Tax farmers were often utilized to collect provincial taxes. They would pay in advance for the right to collect taxes in particular areas. Every few years these rights were put out to bid, thus capturing for the Roman treasury any increase in taxable capacity. In effect, tax farmers were loaning money to the state in advance of tax collections. They also had the responsibility of converting provincial taxes, which were often collected in-kind, into hard cash. [6] Thus the collections by tax farmers had to provide sufficient revenues to repay their advance to the state plus enough to cover the opportunity cost of the funds (i.e., interest), the transactions cost of converting collections into cash, and a profit as well. In fact, tax farming was quite profitable and was a major investment vehicle for wealthy citizens of Rome (Levi 1988: 71-94).

Augustus ended tax farming, however, due to complaints from the provinces. Interestingly, their protests not only had to do with excessive assessments by the tax farmers, as one would expect, but were also due to the fact that the provinces were becoming deeply indebted. A.H.M. Jones (1968: 11) describes the problems with tax farmers:

Oppression and extortion began very early in the provinces and reached fantastic proportions in the later republic. Most governors were primarily interested in acquiring military glory and in making money during their year in office, and the companies which farmed the taxes expected to make ample profits. There was usually collusion between the governor and the tax contractors and the senate was too far away to exercise any effective control over either. The other great abuse of the provinces was extensive moneylending at exorbitant rates of interest to the provincial communities, which could not raise enough ready cash to satisfy both the exorbitant demands of the tax contractors and the blackmail levied by the governors.

As a result of such abuses, tax farming was replaced by direct taxation early in the Empire (Hammond 1946: 85). The provinces now paid a wealth tax of about 1 percent and a flat poll or head tax on each adult. This obviously required regular censuses in order to count the taxable population and assess taxable property. It also led to a major shift in the basis of taxation (Jones 1974: 164-66). Under the tax farmers, taxation was largely based on current income. Consequently, the yield varied according to economic and climactic conditions. Since tax farmers had only a limited time to collect the revenue to which they were entitled, they obviously had to concentrate on collecting such revenue where it was most easily available. Because assets such as land were difficult to convert into cash, this meant that income necessarily was the basic base of taxation. And since tax farmers were essentially bidding against a community's income potential, this meant that a large portion of any increase in income accrued to the tax farmers.

By contrast, the Augustinian system was far less progressive. The shift to flat assessments based on wealth and population both regularized the yield of the tax system and greatly reduced its "progressivity." This is because any growth in taxable capacity led to higher taxes under the tax farming system, while under the Augustinian system communities were only liable for a fixed payment. Thus any increase in income accrued entirely to the people and did not have to be shared with Rome. Individuals knew in advance the exact amount of their tax bill and that any income over and above that amount was entirely theirs. This was obviously a great incentive to produce, since the marginal tax rate above the tax assessment was zero. In economic terms, one can say that there was virtually no excess burden (Musgrave 1959: 140-59). Of course, to the extent that higher incomes increased wealth, some of this gain would be captured through reassessments. But in the short run, the tax system was very pro-growth.

This is by far the best section of the article. Still, one has to remind oneself that exploitation and tax farming did exist later on, despite the article claiming not so. We have several complaints about governors exploiting their terms. In short, while there may have been improvement, it is hard to say that it was due to the tax system and not also due to other factors like peace, infrastructure improvements and long-term stability as well.

The Rise and Fall of Economic Growth

Rome's pro-growth policies, including the creation of a large common market encompassing the entire Mediterranean, a stable currency, and moderate taxes, had a positive impact on trade. Keith Hopkins finds empirical support for this proposition by noting the sharp increase in the number of known shipwrecks dating from the late Republic and early Empire as compared to earlier periods (Hopkins 1980: 105-06). The increase in trade led to an increase in shipping, thus increasing the likelihood that any surviving wrecks would date from this period. Rostovtzeff (1957: 172) indicates that "commerce, and especially foreign and inter-provincial maritime commerce, provided the main sources of wealth in the Roman Empire."

Keep in mind - archeological evidence also notes a booming africa in the fourth century, a period he indicates as a decline in growth.

Hopkins (1980: 106-12) also notes that there was a sharp increase in the Roman money supply which accompanied the expansion of trade. He further notes that this expansion of the money supply did not lead to higher prices. Interest rates also fell to the lowest levels in Roman history in the early part of Augustus's reign (Homer 1977: 53). This strongly suggests that the supply of goods and services grew roughly in line with the increase in the money supply. There was probably also an increase in the demand for cash balances to pay taxes and rents, which would further explain why the increased money supply was non-inflationary.

During the early Empire revenues were so abundant that the state was able to undertake a massive public works program. Augustus repaired all the roads of Italy and Rome, restored the temples and built many new ones, and built many aqueducts, baths and other public buildings. Tiberius, however, cut back on the building program and hoarded large sums of cash.

What he neglects to mention is that the building program of Augustus was largely paid for by plunder and extensive wars against enemies as well as the nationalization of mines. Somehow, Augustus does not sound so capitalistic anymore, does he?

This led to a financial crisis in 33 A.D. in which there was a severe shortage of money. This shortage may have been triggered by a usury law which had not been applied for some years but was again enforced by the courts at this time (Frank 1935). The shortage of money and the curtailment of state expenditures led to a sharp downturn in economic activity which was only relieved when the state made large loans at zero interest in order to provide liquidity (Thornton and Thornton 1990). [7]

This view is disputed.

Under Claudius (41-54 A.D.) the Roman Empire added its last major territory with the conquest of Britain. Not long thereafter, under Trajan (98-117 A.D.), the Empire achieved its greatest geographic expansion. Consequently, the state would no longer receive additional revenue from provincial tribute and any increase in revenues would now have to come from within the Empire itself.

This assumes that the provinces conquered by Claudius and Trajan actually made up for the resources that were used in their conquest and subsequent defence. There is no evidence for this. In fact, Britain always was a charity case until the fourth century (see a pattern here? More regions becoming important in the fourth century, yet it is somehow a period of economic decline?). Dacia was very costly and of course he neglects to mention that Mesopotamia was a giant waste of money and men that amounted to nothing but an insurrection that would threaten the whole mediterranean and rob the empire of millions of taxpayers.

Although Rostovtzeff (1957: 91) credits the Julio-Claudian emperors with maintaining the Augustinian policy of laissez faire, the demand for revenue was already beginning to undermine the strength of the Roman economy. An example of this from the time of Caligula (37-41 A.D.) is recorded by Philo (20 B.C-50 A.D.):

Not long ago a certain man who had been appointed a collector of taxes in our country, when some of those who appeared to owe such tribute fled out of poverty, from a fear of intolerable punishment if they remained without paying, carried off their wives, and their children, and their parents, and their whole families by force, beating and insulting them, and heaping every kind of contumely and ill treatment upon them, to make them either give information as to where the fugitives had concealed themselves, or pay the money instead of them, though they could not do either the one thing or the other; in the first place, because they did not know where they were, and secondly, because they were in still greater poverty than the men who had fled [Yonge 1993: 610].

A tax collector abusing his rights in order to gain money? Hmmm...sounds suspiciously like earlier practices. But had they not been abolished by Augustus according to his earlier paragraphs?

Also, we hear tales like these throughout every period of every history. These tales are not indicative of any widespread change. Do I have to dig out Cicero?

Inflation and Taxation

As early as the rule of Nero (54-68 A.D.) there is evidence that the demand for revenue led to debasement of the coinage. Revenue was needed to pay the increasing costs of defense and a growing bureaucracy. However, rather than raise taxes, Nero and subsequent emperors preferred to debase the currency by reducing the precious metal content of coins. This was, of course, a form of taxation; in this case, a tax on cash balances (Bailey 1956).

Throughout most of the Empire, the basic units of Roman coinage were the gold aureus, the silver denarius, and the copper or bronze sesterce. [8] The aureus was minted at 40-42 to the pound, the denarius at 84 to the pound, and a sesterce was equivalent to one-quarter of a denarius. Twenty-five denarii equaled one aureus and the denarius was considered the basic coin and unit of account.

The aureus did not circulate widely. Consequently, debasement was mainly limited to the denarius. Nero reduced the silver content of the denarius to 90 percent and slightly reduced the size of the aureus in order to maintain the 25 to 1 ratio. Trajan (98-117 A.D.) reduced the silver content to 85 percent, but was able to maintain the ratio because of a large influx of gold. In fact, some historians suggest that he deliberately devalued the denarius precisely in order to maintain the historic ratio. Debasement continued under the reign of Marcus Aurelius (161-180 A.D.), who reduced the silver content of the denarius to 75 percent, further reduced by Septimius Severus to 50 percent. By the middle of the third century A.D., the denarius had a silver content of just 5 percent.

Interestingly, the continual debasements did not improve the Empire's fiscal position. This is because of Gresham's Law ("bad money drives out good"). People would hoard older, high silver content coins and pay their taxes in those with the least silver. Thus the government's "real" revenues may have actually fallen. As Aurelio Bernardi explains:

At the beginning the debasement proved undoubtedly profitable for the state. Nevertheless, in the course of years, this expedient was abused and the [fn2]century of inflation which had been thus brought about was greatly to the disadvantage of the State's finances. Prices were rising too rapidly and it became impossible to count on an immediate proportional increase in the fiscal revenue, because of the rigidity of the apparatus of tax collection. [9]

At first, the government could raise additional revenue from the sale of state property. Later, more unscrupulous emperors like Domitian (81-96 A.D.) would use trumped-up charges to confiscate the assets of the wealthy. They would also invent excuses to demand tribute from the provinces and the wealthy. Such tribute, called the aurum corinarium, was nominally voluntary and paid in gold to commemorate special occasions, such as the accession of a new emperor or a great military victory. Caracalla (198-217 A.D.) often reported such dubious "victories" as a way of raising revenue. Rostovtzeff (1957: 417) calls these levies "pure robbery."

Although taxes on ordinary Romans were not raised, citizenship was greatly expanded in order to bring more people into the tax net. Taxes on the wealthy, however, were sharply increased, especially those on inheritances and manumissions (freeing of slaves).

Occasionally, the tax burden would be moderated by a cancellation of back taxes or other measures. One such occasion occurred under the brief reign of Pertinax (193 A.D.), who replaced the rapacious Commodus (A.D. 176-192). As Edward Gibbon (1932: 88) tells us:

Though every measure of injustice and extortion had been adopted, which could collect the property of the subject into the coffers of the prince; the rapaciousness of Commodus had been so very inadequate to his extravagance, that, upon his death, no more than eight thousand pounds were found in the exhausted treasury, to defray the current expenses of government, and to discharge the pressing demand of a liberal donative, which the new emperor had been obliged to promise to the Praetorian guards. Yet under these distressed circumstances, Pertinax had the generous firmness to remit all the oppressive taxes invented by Commodus, and to cancel all the unjust claims of the treasury; declaring in a decree to the senate, "that he was better satisfied to administer a poor republic with innocence, than to acquire riches by the ways of tyranny and dishonor."

Another good section, though it omits a great deal of information, like the fact that the good capitalist Augustus himself was responsible for the greatest confiscation and killing of senators and other wealthy folk than any other emperor before and after him. In any case, while most of the facts of this section are correct, one does not need to come to the same conclusion.

State Socialism

Unfortunately, Pertinax was an exception. Most emperors continued the policies of debasement and increasingly heavy taxes, levied mainly on the wealthy. The war against wealth was not simply due to purely fiscal requirements, but was also part of a conscious policy of exterminating the Senatorial class, which had ruled Rome since ancient times, in order to eliminate any potential rivals to the emperor. Increasingly, emperors came to believe that the army was the sole source of power and they concentrated their efforts on sustaining the army at all cost.

Okay. Here is how he goes off the reservation and decends into wild speculation. First, there was no war against wealth. The taxes were also not levied against the wealth primarily (unless you count prostitutes, merchants, provincials, freedmen etc. all as wealthy).

There was also no conscious policy of ecterminating the senatorial class. In fact, ancient emperors took great times to make sure there was a senate, because it decided if they would become gods. The senate also was a major economical factor with financing most of the public construction in the empire. Same goes for provincial "senates". Furthermore, we have evidence of the emperor paying for the debts of senators out of his own pocket or for Emperors raising people to the senate with public money.

I also feel it necessary to point out that a large part of the Emperor's wealth was not dependant on taxes, but on the property of the Imperial House. The Imperial throne was a major landowner (owning among other things all of Egypt), engaged in global trade, owned the mines etc. So there is no sharp distinction between public and private wealth, no matter how hard he tries to make one.

As the private wealth of the Empire was gradually confiscated or taxed away, driven away or hidden, economic growth slowed to a virtual standstill. Moreover, once the wealthy were no longer able to pay the state's bills, the burden inexorably fell onto the lower classes, so that average people suffered as well from the deteriorating economic conditions. In Rostovtzeff's words, "The heavier the pressure of the state on the upper classes, the more intolerable became the condition of the lower" (Rostovtzeff 1957: 430).

At this point, in the third century A.D., the money economy completely broke down. Yet the military demands of the state remained high. Rome's borders were under continual pressure from Germanic tribes in the North and from the Persians in the East. Moreover, it was now explicitly understood by everyone that the emperor's power and position depended entirely on the support of the army. Thus, the army's needs required satisfaction above all else, regardless of the consequences to the private economy.

I won't dignify this with a reply seeing how his premise is obviously false.

With the collapse of the money economy, the normal system of taxation also broke down. This forced the state to directly appropriate whatever resources it needed wherever they could be found. Food and cattle, for example, were requisitioned directly from farmers.

Note how he omits that this procedure saved a lot of money as grain was no longer shipped from the whole empire to army units. Also, can you guess what is needed for this to be succesfull? That is right, a strong regional economy.

Furthermore, what he omits is that the empire was able to raise enormous, previously unheard goods due to this. For example, what about the free wine, pork and the increase in grain that the romans were able to give away for free due to this system?

There is no evidence this lead to a total collapse of the Roman economy.

Other producers were similarly liable for whatever the army might need. The result, of course, was chaos, dubbed "permanent terrorism" by Rostovtzeff (1957: 449). Eventually, the state was forced to compel individuals to continue working and producing.

Which had happened under Augustus as well.

The result was a system in which individuals were forced to work at their given place of employment and remain in the same occupation, with little freedom to move or change jobs. Farmers were tied to the land, as were their children, and similar demands were made on all other workers, producers, and artisans as well. Even soldiers were required to remain soldiers for life, and their sons compelled to follow them. The remaining members of the upper classes were pressed into providing municipal services, such as tax collection, without pay. And should tax collections fall short of the state's demands, they were required to make up the difference themselves. This led to further efforts to hide whatever wealth remained in the Empire, especially among those who still found ways of becoming rich. Ordinarily, they would have celebrated their new-found wealth; now they made every effort to appear as poor as everyone else, lest they become responsible for providing municipal services out of their own pocket.

The steady encroachment of the state into the intimate workings of the economy also eroded growth. The result was increasing feudalization of the economy and a total breakdown of the division of labor. People fled to the countryside and took up subsistence farming or attached themselves to the estates of the wealthy, which operated as much as possible as closed systems, providing for all their own needs and not engaging in trade at all. Meanwhile, much land was abandoned and remained fallow or fell into the hands of the state, whose mismanagement generally led to a decline in production.

Know that he mainly uses Jones as a source here and that nowadays, his views about the agri deserti is quite disputed. There are also a number of other small detail mistakes he makes there.

Emperor Diocletian's Reforms

By the end of the third century, Rome had clearly reached a crisis. The state could no longer obtain sufficient resources even through compulsion and was forced to rely ever more heavily on debasement of the currency to raise revenue. By the reign of Claudius II Gothicus (268-270 A.D.) the silver content of the denarius was down to just .02 percent (Michell 1947: 2). As a consequence, prices skyrocketed. A measure of Egyptian wheat, for example, which sold for seven to eight drachmaes in the second century now cost 120,000 drachmaes. This suggests an inflation of 15,000 percent during the third century (Rostovtzeff 1957: 471).

Finally, the very survival of the state was at stake. At this point, the Emperor Diocletian (284-305 A.D.) took action. He attempted to stop the inflation with a far-reaching system of price controls on all services and commodities. [10] These controls were justified by Diocletian's belief that the inflation was due mainly to speculation and hoarding, rather than debasement of the currency. As he stated in the preamble to his edict of 301 A.D.:

For who is so hard and so devoid of human feeling that he cannot, or rather has not perceived, that in the commerce carried on in the markets or involved in the daily life of cities immoderate prices are so widespread that the unbridled passion for gain is lessened neither by abundant supplies nor by fruitful years; so that without a doubt men who are busied in these affairs constantly plan to control the very winds and weather from the movements of the stars, and, evil that they are, they cannot endure the watering of the fertile fields by the rains from above which bring the hope of future harvests, since they reckon it their own loss if abundance comes through the moderation of the weather [Jones 1970: 310].

Despite the fact that the death penalty applied to violations of the price controls, they were a total failure. Lactantius (1984: 11), a contemporary of Diocletian's, tells us that much blood was shed over "small and cheap items" and that goods disappeared from sale. Yet, "the rise in price got much worse." Finally, "after many had met their deaths, sheer necessity led to the repeal of the law."

Diocletian's other reforms, however, were more successful. The cornerstone of Diocletian's economic policy was to turn the existing ad hoc policy of requisitions to obtain resources for the state into a regular system. [11] Since money was worthless, the new system was based on collecting taxes in the form of actual goods and services, but regularized into a budget so that the state knew exactly what it needed and taxpayers knew exactly how much they had to pay.

Careful calculations were made of precisely how much grain, cloth, oil, weapons or other goods were necessary to sustain a single Roman soldier. Thus, working backwards from the state's military requirements, a calculation was made for the total amount of goods and services the state would need in a given year. On the other side of the coin, it was also necessary to calculate what the taxpayers were able to provide in terms of the necessary goods and services. This required a massive census, not only of people but of resources, especially cultivated land. Land was graded according to its productivity. As Lactantius (1984: 37) put it, "Fields were measured out clod by clod, vines and trees were counted, every kind of animal was registered, and note taken of every member of the population."

Taxable capacity was measured in terms of the caput, which stood for a single man, his family, his land and what they could produce. [12] The state's needs were measured in terms of the annona, which represented the cost of maintaining a single soldier for a year. With these two measures calculated in precision, it was now possible to have a real budget and tax system based entirely on actual goods and services. Assessments were made and resources collected, transported and stored for state use.

Although an army on the move might still requisition goods or services when needed, the overall result of Diocletian's reform was generally positive. Taxpayers at least knew in advance what they were required to pay, rather than suffer from ad hoc confiscations. Also, the tax burden was spread more widely, instead of simply falling on the unlucky, thus lowering the burden for many Romans. At the same time, with the improved availability of resources, the state could now better plan and conduct its military operations.

In order to maintain this system where people were tied to their land, home, jobs, and places of employment, Diocletian transformed the previous ad hoc practice. Workers were organized into guilds and businesses into corporations called collegia. Both became de facto organs of the state, controlling and directing their members to work and produce for the state.

Factually correct, but as shown before, one does not need to come to the same conclusions. I find it quite puzzling that he does not even cite a single contradictory point of view.

The Fall of Rome

Constantine (308-37 A.D.) continued Diocletian's policies of regimenting the economy, by tying workers and their descendants even more tightly to the land or their place of employment (Jones 1958). For example, in 332 he issued the following order:

Any person in whose possession a tenant that belongs to another is found not only shall restore the aforesaid tenant to his place of origin but also shall assume the capitation tax for this man for the time that he was with him. Tenants also who meditate flight may be bound with chains and reduced to a servile condition, so that by virtue of a servile condemnation they shall be compelled to fulfill the duties that befit free men [Jones 1970: 312].

Despite such efforts, land continued to be abandoned and trade, for the most part, ceased (Rostovtzeff 1926). Industry moved to the provinces, basically leaving Rome as an economic empty shell; still in receipt of taxes, grain and other goods produced in the provinces, but producing nothing itself.

Note that this process was already completed in the first century AD. In fact, in late antiquity, we see very much increased urbanization. And Africa became the most densely populated and most-grain producing region of the empire. Somehow, this does not fit with his view. Also, note that in this time, revenues of the state actually increased once more as the frontiers stabilized.

The mob of Rome and the palace favorites produced nothing, yet continually demanded more, leading to an intolerable tax burden on the productive classes. [13]

In the fifty years after Diocletian the Roman tax burden roughly doubled, making it impossible for small farmers to live on their production (Bernardi 1970: 55). [14] This is what led to the final breakdown of the economy (Jones 1959). As Lactantius (1984: 13) put it:

The number of recipients began to exceed the number of contributors by so much that, with farmers' resources exhausted by the enormous size of the requisitions, fields became deserted and cultivated land was turned into forest.

If the economy collapsed, how come the romans were able to produce far more and give it away for free than they ever did before? And continued this process for over 100 years?

Although Constantine made an effort to restore the currency, subsequent emperors resumed the debasement, resulting in renewed price inflation (West 1951). Apparently, Emperor Julian (360-63 A.D.) also refused to believe that the inflation was due to debasement, but rather was caused by merchants hoarding their stores.

The solidus weight in gold did not change until the 10th century. I guess the author failed to do his fact checking (note how he cites a very old secondary source for this). The author failed to note that Julian was also correct, for the shortage in grain was not felt in a town 35km away, which was abundant with corn.

To prove his point, he sent his own grain reserves into the market at Antioch. According to Gibbon (1932: 801),

The consequences might have been foreseen, and were soon felt. The Imperial wheat was purchased by the rich merchants; the proprietors of land or of corn withheld from the city the accustomed supply; and the small quantities that appeared in the market were secretly sold at an advanced and illegal price.

Although he had been warned that his policies would not lower prices, but rather would exacerbate the shortage, Julian nevertheless continued to believe that his policy worked, and blamed complaints of its failure on the ingratitude of the people (Downey 1951).

Gibbon was written three centuries ago. Why is he still cited as an authority? Furthermore, when Julian ordered his army to distribute corn, guess what happened? The crisis was averted.

The shortage of grain also existed due to extraordinary circumstances - for example the entire roman army was encamped in Antioch. More people eat more, leading to merchants hording? Colour me unsurprised. Antioch says nothing about general conditions.

In other respects, however, Julian was more enlightened. In the area of tax policy, he showed sensitivity and perception. He understood that the main reason for the state's fiscal problem was the excessive burden of taxation, which fell unequally on the population. The wealthy effectively were able to evade taxation through legal and illegal measures, such as bribery. By contrast, the ordinary citizen was helpless against the demands of the increasingly brutal tax collectors.

Previous measures to ease the tax burden, however, were ineffective because they only relieved the wealthy. Constantine, for example, had sought to ease the burden by reducing the number of tax units--caputs--for which a given district was responsible. In practice, this meant that only the wealthy had any reduction in their taxes. Julian, however, by cutting the tax rate, ensured that his tax reduction was realized by all the people. He also sought to broaden the tax base by abolishing some of the tax exemptions which many groups, especially the wealthy, had been granted by previous emperors (Bernardi 1970: 59, 66).

What he neglects to mention is that Julian also secured the frontiers. More people earn more and can therefore be taxed if a Barbarian is not knocking them over the head? What a surprise.

Also, earlier on the author clamors against a war on the wealthy. Now he praises Julian for taxing them more and condemms Constantine for doing the opposite? Eh?

Nevertheless, the revenues of the state remained inadequate to maintain the national defense. This led to further tax increases, such as the increase in the sales tax from 1 percent to 4.5 percent in 444 A.D. (Bernardi 1970: 75). However, state revenues continued to shrink, as taxpayers invested increasing amounts of time, effort and money in tax evasion schemes.

Which of course never happened before under Augustus, right?

Also note how this section and the following is pure speculation.

Thus even as tax rates rose, tax revenues fell, hastening the decline of the Roman state (Bernardi 1970: 81-3). In short, taxpayers evaded taxation by withdrawing from society altogether. Large, powerful landowners, able to avoid taxation through legal or illegal means, began to organize small communities around them. Small landowners, crushed into bankruptcy by the heavy burden of taxation, threw themselves at the mercy of the large landowners, signing on as tenants or even as slaves. (Slaves, of course, paid no taxes.) The latter phenomenon was so widespread and so injurious to the state's revenues, in fact, that in 368 A.D. Emperor Valens declared it illegal to renounce one's liberty in order to place oneself under the protection of a great landlord (Bernardi 1970: 49).

In the end, there was no money left to pay the army, build forts or ships, or protect the frontier. The barbarian invasions, which were the final blow to the Roman state in the fifth century, were simply the culmination of three centuries of deterioration in the fiscal capacity of the state to defend itself. Indeed, many Romans welcomed the barbarians as saviors from the onerous tax burden. [15]

This is a classic case of putting the cart before the horse.

Although the fall of Rome appears as a cataclysmic event in history, for the bulk of Roman citizens it had little impact on their way of life. As Henri Pirenne (1939: 33-62) has pointed out, once the invaders effectively had displaced the Roman government they settled into governing themselves. At this point, they no longer had any incentive to pillage, but rather sought to provide peace and stability in the areas they controlled. After all, the wealthier their subjects the greater their taxpaying capacity.

And his proof for Visigothis tax rates is where?

In conclusion, the fall of Rome was fundamentally due to economic deterioration resulting from excessive taxation, inflation, and over-regulation. Higher and higher taxes failed to raise additional revenues because wealthier taxpayers could evade such taxes while the middle class--and its taxpaying capacity--were exterminated.

Dear lord. He thinks the fall of the Roman empire is due to a single issue instead of a compley myriad of factors. Here is a hint - no professional ancient historian can cite a single cause why the empire fell. There are over 1000 competing theories on the subject.

But of course Bruce Bartlett, who has not written a single paper on ancient history in a peer-reviewed journal has accomplished what countless specialists could not. Let us all praise his inspiration and vision.

Although the final demise of the Roman Empire in the West (its Eastern half continued on as the Byzantine Empire) was an event of great historical importance, for most Romans it was a relief.

...and now he is just an idiot. The population of the mediterranean world declined to about 25% of its previous level due to the destruction of the empire. It took Europe over 1000 years to have another city like Rome that could support 1 million inhabitants. I am sure all those people who died/were enslaved/raped or starved to death were relieved they did not have to pay heavy taxes anymore.

[Garibaldi]

This is tangential to the main discussion, but;

It wouldn't be because Augustus rose to power on the backs of his troops, just like almost every dynasty after him?

While Augustus rose to power through military victory, he still derived considerable power and legitimacy from his personal wealth & provinces, and a complex network of offices and titles. It was only later that an emperor's power really derived solely from the loyalty of the frontier legions.

[K. A. Pital]

Wait, did someone seriously put an article from CATO institute (the infamous Randian tobacco apologists) into the History forum? I really see Thanas has a lot of patience.

One cannot really call the curiales burgeois.

I think in CATO-world, capitalism existed from the dawn of mankind. It's not a formation tied to the industrial revolution... it's kinda like God. It's eternal. Therefore, there should always be bourgeois. And if there are none to be found, we will arbitrarily pick a social class and declare it capitalist. Voila. Note how he uses "free market" and "middle class" to describe the policies of antiquity. He's really nuts.

[TC Pilot]

It's just because people like to simplify "capitalism" to mean "people make money by doing stuff." If one accepts a definition of capitalism that broad and generalized, then yeah, I guess there were ancient capitalists.

One could just as easily call Roman society "socialist" with the grain/corn doles, Imperial ownership of things like mines as Thanas said, etc, while also calling it libertarian, what with no public police force or court system, etc. under the principate or republic. Not that we should force modern concepts on societies that existed two thousand years ago in the first place...

[Duckie]

Man, you have to be way into cloud cuckoo-land to think that roman peasants greeted the Goths as liberators because the Goths had a lower marginal tax rate.

[Thanas]

This is tangential to the main discussion, but;

It wouldn't be because Augustus rose to power on the backs of his troops, just like almost every dynasty after him?

While Augustus rose to power through military victory, he still derived considerable power and legitimacy from his personal wealth & provinces, and a complex network of offices and titles. It was only later that an emperor's power really derived solely from the loyalty of the frontier legions.

It never derived solely from the loyalty of the frontier legions. Emperors who tried to rule through military means alone oftentimes found themselves dead very soon.

Wait, did someone seriously put an article from CATO institute (the infamous Randian tobacco apologists) into the History forum? I really see Thanas has a lot of patience.

One cannot really call the curiales burgeois.

I think in CATO-world, capitalism existed from the dawn of mankind. It's not a formation tied to the industrial revolution... it's kinda like God. It's eternal. Therefore, there should always be bourgeois. And if there are none to be found, we will arbitrarily pick a social class and declare it capitalist. Voila. Note how he uses "free market" and "middle class" to describe the policies of antiquity. He's really nuts.

He is. I also wonder how you would define a free market in those times? I mean, the law decreed that farmers had to sell their produce in the nearest town. How is that free market by any definition if the most important good is heavily regulated?

Man, you have to be way into cloud cuckoo-land to think that roman peasants greeted the Goths as liberators because the Goths had a lower marginal tax rate.

Yeah. People never joined the goths because they were enslaved/ran away/hated their masters, but throw a flexible tax rate (for which there is no evidence at all) into it and they will join? But guess which population mostly joined the goths? Mining slaves. Who did not pay any tax at all, but were mostly enslaved barbarians/criminals in the first place.

[Big Orange]

I doubt the Roman aristocracy ("royalty", senators, generals etc) were taxed that heavily anyway, with the province subjects more pressurised by the tax men and the minor kingdoms on the edges of the Empire became tribute states. In Habsburg/Bourbon Spain, the aristocracy were exempt from most taxes and the Catholic Church, a prominant organization in Spain and Italy, were tax dodgers from then to this day. Either way you've got to be in cloud coo-coo land to say that taxes spoiled the Western Empire, when you needed taxes for the upkeep of city forums, city walls, aqueducts, and roadways etc. Byzantine survival was mainly due to it being more urbanized than the Western Empire and having a strong central government, private trade and commercialism must've contributed to Byzantine endurance as well, and the Eastern Empire was sitting on the trade arteries leading to the Persians, Indians, and Chinese.

[ray245]

Although the final demise of the Roman Empire in the West (its Eastern half continued on as the Byzantine Empire) was an event of great historical importance, for most Romans it was a relief.

What the fuck? He's completely ignoring the fact that that the areas that was under the Eastern Roman Emperor was much more prosperous as opposed to western Europe after the fall of the Western Roman Empire?!

Wow, for some reason, he missed the whole point of learning from history and not forcing his views into history.

I really wish politicians actually consults historians before forming their political beliefs.

[Guardsman Bass]

One thing I find kind of interesting (and slightly amusing) about these types of "one-shot explanation" essays is the unspoken subtext, "if only". If only those Romans hadn't turned into a bunch of bloody socialists, if only, if only, etc, the Roman Empire might have lived on.

But how chancy and contingent was it (the final collapse of the Western Empire)? As Thanas mentioned, it was by no means true that the Empire was headed into an irreversible decline by the 4th century; things were getting better in certain areas, and the Eastern Empire was doing remarkably well right around the time the Western Empire finally bought it.

[Samuel]

If it was that easy an Emperor would have managed to stop it. The problem was so many things and the difficulty in figuring out which one is the key one. The fact we still haven't figured it out gives a clue to the difficulty of the problem.

[Thanas]

One thing I find kind of interesting (and slightly amusing) about these types of "one-shot explanation" essays is the unspoken subtext, "if only". If only those Romans hadn't turned into a bunch of bloody socialists, if only, if only, etc, the Roman Empire might have lived on.

But how chancy and contingent was it (the final collapse of the Western Empire)? As Thanas mentioned, it was by no means true that the Empire was headed into an irreversible decline by the 4th century; things were getting better in certain areas, and the Eastern Empire was doing remarkably well right around the time the Western Empire finally bought it.

And that is the reason why most serious roman historians hate popular science. Because it always looks for a correlation to the modern times. Remember the old: "hey, the romans had no new slaves, right? Ergo shortage of labour killed the empire." This statement is not only factually incorrect, but also gained a lot of popularity in an era when labour was in high demand. Now it is "the roman economy collapsed" in times when the economy is either booming or crashing (like in the last two decades). Before, in the cold war, people put a lot of thought on external pressure etc. When aids and ebola came up, research into roman plagues turned front page news. Today, a lot of thought focusses on religious trouble.

That is the problem with history in general. Most historians know that and do look for a larger picture (usually). However, you will always have some popular historians (and that is the trouble with professional british and american historians - their standards of work are generally pretty lax - in the english world, there is a much lesser divide between popular historians and serious historians than in the french or german world) who jump on one explanation.

And then you get people like that guy in the OP who does not even have a BA in ancient history but still tries to make an argument in a pseudo-intellectual way.

[ray245]

And then you get people like that guy in the OP who does not even have a BA in ancient history but still tries to make an argument in a pseudo-intellectual way.

And the annoying thing is many people would accept their views to be correct because most people are unable to rebut what he said based on their lack of understanding in history.

[Big Orange]

This essay/lecture by Ugo Bardi, "Peak Civilization": The Fall of the Roman Empire, is interesting and informative. The comments section below the article is a good read as well.

[ray245]

This essay/lecture by Ugo Bardi, "Peak Civilization": The Fall of the Roman Empire, is interesting and informative. The comments section below the article is a good read as well.

Is he even a fucking historian?

[Bounty]

He's a chemist.

[Thanas]

This essay/lecture by Ugo Bardi, "Peak Civilization": The Fall of the Roman Empire, is interesting and informative. The comments section below the article is a good read as well.

Okay. That's it. I've had it with you. From now on, you - yes, you, Big Orange, specifically - are only allowed to post articles by historians in this forum.

This afternoon I'll try to say something about a subject that I am sure you are all interested in: the decline and the fall of the Roman Empire. It is something that has been discussed over and over; it is because we think that our civilization may follow the same destiny as the Roman one: decline and fall. So, the Roman Empire offers us some kind of a model. We can say it is the paradigm of collapsing societies. And, yet, we don't seem to be able to find an agreement on what caused the collapse of the Roman Empire.

Historians - and not just historians - have been debating this subject and they came up with literally dozens of explanations: barbarian invasions, epidemics, lead poisoning, moral decadence and what you have. Which is the right one? Or are all these explanations right? This is the point that I would like to discuss today. I'll be focusing on the interpretation of Joseph Tainter, based on the fact that empires and civilizations are "complex" systems and try to use system dynamics to describe collapse.

Before we go into this matter, however, let me add a disclaimer. I am not a historian and I don't pretend to be one. It is not my intention of criticizing or disparaging the work of historians. You see, there are several ways of making a fool of oneself: one which is very effective is to try teaching to people who know more than you. For some reasons, however, it happens all the time and not just with history; just look at the debate on climate change! So, what I am trying to do here is just to apply system dynamics on the history of the Roman Empire which - as far as I know - has not been done, so far. It is a qualitative version of system dynamics; making a complete model of the whole Roman Empire is beyond my means. But the results are very interesting; or so I believe.

Translation - I am not a historian, but let me try to meddle in their affairs nevertheless.

Let's start from the beginning and here the beginning is with the people who were contemporary to the collapse, the Romans themselves. Did they understand what was happening to them? This is a very important point: if a society, intended as its government, can understand that collapse is coming, can they do something to avoid it? It is relevant to our own situation, today.

Of course, the ancient Romans are long gone and they didn't leave us newspapers. Today we have huge amounts of documents but, from Roman times, we have very little. All what has survived from those times had to be slowly hand copied by a Medieval monk, and a lot has been lost. We have a lot of texts by Roman historians - none of them seemed to understand exactly what was going on.

I quite doubt that. Ammianus certainly recognized the importance of Adrianople, Libanios recognized the death of Julian etc...

Historians of that time were more like chroniclers; they reported the facts they knew. Not that they didn't have their ideas on what they were describing, but they were not trying to make models, as we would say today. So, I think it may be interesting to give a look to documents written by people who were not historians; but who were living the collapse of the Roman Empire. What did they think of what was going on?

Let me start with Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who lived from 120 to 180 A.D. He was probably the last Emperor who ruled a strong empire.

Factually very much incorrect. What about Diocletian, Constantine? Or about the Dynasty of Severus, which managed to defeat the Parthian empire and destroyed it utterly?

Yet, he spent most of his life fighting to keep the Empire together; fighting barbarians. Maybe you have seen the movie "The Gladiator": Marcus Aurelius appears in the first scenes. The movie is not historically accurate, of course, but it is true that Aurelius died in the field, while he was fighting invaders. He wasn't fighting for glory, he wasn't fighting to conquer new territories. He was just fighting to keep the Empire together, and he had a terribly hard time just doing that. Times had changed a lot from the times of Caesar and of Trajan.

Marcus Aurelius did what he could to keep the barbarians away but, a few decades after his death, the Empire had basically collapsed. That was what historians call "the third century crisis". It was really bad; a disaster. The empire managed to survive for a couple of centuries longer as a political entity, but it wasn't the same thing. It was not any longer the Empire of Marcus Aurelius; it was something that just tried to survive as best as it could, fighting barbarians, plagues, famines, warlords and all kinds of disasters falling on them one after the other. Eventually, the Empire disappeared also as a political entity. It did that with a whimper - at least in its Western part, in the 5th century a.d. The Eastern Empire lasted much longer, but it is another story.

Yes, by all means, let us ignore evidence that does not fit into our viewpoint, like the military strength of the empire under Diocletian and Constantine. Oh wait, he just declared a century of succesful defence of the empire just barely hanging on.

Now, if it is rare that we have the portrait of a man who lived so long ago, it is even rarer that we can also read his inner thoughts. But that we can do that with Marcus Aurelius. He was a "philosopher-emperor" who left us his "Meditations"; a book of philosophical thoughts. For instance, you can read such things as:

Though thou shouldst be going to live three thousand years, and as many times ten thousand years, still remember that no man loses any other life than this which he now lives, nor lives any other than this which he now loses.

That is the typical tune of the book - you may find it fascinating or perhaps boring; it depends on you. Personally, I find it fascinating. The "Meditations" is a statement from a man who was seeing his world crumbling down around him and who strove nevertheless to maintain a personal balance; to keep a moral stance. Aurelius surely understood that something was wrong with the Empire: during all their history, the Romans had been almost always on the offensive. Now, they were always defending themselves. That wasn't right; of course.

And the defence of the frontiers harks back to Hadrian. And little more than two decades later, they expanded again under Severus and utterly crushed an enemy that had hounded them for over 200 years. Let us ignore that as well, for it does not fit our facts.

But you never find in the Meditations a single line that lets you suspect that the Emperor thought that there was something to be done other than simply fighting to keep the barbarians out. You never read that the Emperor was considering, say, things like social reform, or maybe something to redress the disastrous situation of the economy. He had no concern, apparently, that the Empire could actually fall one day or another.

What disastrous situation of the economy? The empire had been hit by a plague, for gods sake, there was little else to do but wait for a recovery (which did happen). And while Marcus Aurelius does not write about economic things, that has nothing to do with him not considering it. We have several texts by contemporary historians (mainly Cassius Dio) who address economic policies - which MA did undertake. A philosophical text like the meditations is not concerned with economics, especially not a stoic text.

Now, I'd like to show you an excerpt from another document; written perhaps by late 4th century. Probably after the battle of Adrianopolis; that was one of last important battles fought (and lost) by the Roman Empire. This is a curious document. It is called, normally, "Of matters of war" because the title and the name of the author have been lost. But we have the bulk of the text and we can say that the author was probably somebody high up in the imperial bureaucracy. Someone very creative - clearly - you can see that from the illustrations of the book. Of course what we see now are not the original illustrations, but copies made during the Middle Ages. But the fact that the book had these illustration was probably what made it survive: people liked these colorful illustrations and had the book copied. So it wasn't lost. The author described all sorts of curious weaponry. One that you can see here is a warship powered by oxen.


Of course, a ship like this one would never have worked. Think of how to feed the oxen. And think of how to manage the final results of feeding the oxen. Probably none of the curious weapons invented by our anonymous author would ever have worked. It all reminds me of Jeremy Rifkin and his hydrogen based economy. Rifkin understands what is the problem, but the solutions he proposes, well, are a little like the end result of feeding the oxen; but let me not go into that. The point is that our 4th century author does understand that the Roman Empire is in trouble.

Why does he not give the full name of the text? This is nothing but an excerpt from Vegetius, De Re Militari. The problem is that he is of course misrepresenting Vegetius here. A lot of his weapons work - for example his description of siegecraft is outstanding. The fact of the matter is that we do not currently know why this ship is depicted like that - it may very well be that the medieval copyist made a mistake or fabricated stuff. At the end of the day, though, I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss Vegetius.

Actually, he seems to be scared to death because of what's happening. Read this sentence, I am showing it to you in the original Latin to give you a sense of the flavor of this text.
“In primis sciendum est quod imperium romanum circumlatrantium ubique nationum perstringat insania et omne latus limitum tecta naturalibus locis appetat dolosa barbaries."
Of course you may not be able to translate from Latin on the spot. For that, being Italian gives you a definite advantage. But let me just point out a word to you: "circumlatrantium" . which refers to barbarians who are, literally, "barking around" the empire's borders. They are like dogs barking and running around; and not just barking - they are trying hard to get in. It is almost a scene from a horror movie. A nightmare. So the author of "Of matters of war" is thinking of how to get rid of these monsters. But his solutions were not so good. Actually it was just wishful thinking. None of these strange weapons were ever built. Even our 4th century author, therefore, fails completely in understanding what were the real problems of the Empire.

Oh, for gods sake. These descriptions are nothing special. I can even pull similar things from the first century AD.

Now, I would like to show you just another document from the time of the Roman Empire. It is "De Reditu suo", by Rutilius Namatianus. The title means "of his return". Namatianus was a patrician who lived in the early 5th century; he was a contemporary of St. Patrick, the Irish saint. He had some kind of job with the imperial administration in Rome. It was some decades before the "official" disappearance of the Western Roman Empire; that was in 476, when the last emperor, Romolus Augustulus, was deposed. You may have seen Romulus Augustulus as protagonist of the movie "The Last Legion". Of course that is not a movie that pretends to be historically accurate, but it is fun to think that after so many years we are still interested in the last years of the Roman Empire - it is a subject of endless fascination. Even the book by Namatianus has been transformed into a movie, as you can see in the figure. It is a work of fantasy, but they have tried to be faithful to the spirit of Namatianus' report. It must be an interesting movie, but it has been shown only in theaters in Italy, and even there for a very short time; so I missed it. But let's move on.

Namatianus lived at a time that was very close to the last gasp of the Empire. He found that, at some point, it wasn't possible to live in Rome any longer. Everything was collapsing around him and he decided to take a boat and leave. He was born in Gallia, that we call "France" today, and apparently he had some properties there. So, that is where he headed for. That is the reason for the title "of his return". He must have arrived there and survived for some time, because the document that he wrote about his travel has survived and we can still read it, even though the end is missing. So, Namatianus gives us this chilling report. Just read this excerpt:

"I have chosen the sea, since roads by land, if on the level, are flooded by rivers; if on higher ground, are beset with rocks. Since Tuscany and since the Aurelian highway, after suffering the outrages of Goths with fire or sword, can no longer control forest with homestead or river with bridge, it is better to entrust my sails to the wayward."

Can you believe that? If there was a thing that the Romans had always been proud of were their roads. These roads had a military purpose, of course, but everybody could use them. A Roman Empire without roads is not the Roman Empire, it is something else altogether. Think of Los Angeles without highways. "Sic transit gloria mundi" , as the Romans would say; there goes the glory of the world. Namatianus tells us also of silted harbors, deserted cities, a landscape of ruins that he sees as he moves north along the Italian coast.

But what does Namatianus think of all this? Well, he sees the collapse all around him, but he can't understand it. For him, the reasons of the fall of Rome are totally incomprehensible. He can only interpret what is going on as a temporary setback. Rome had hard times before but the Romans always rebounded and eventually triumphed over their enemies. It has always been like this, Rome will become powerful and rich again.

There would be much more to say on this matter, but I think it is enough to say that the Romans did not really understand what was happening to their Empire, except in terms of military setbacks that they always saw as temporary. They always seemed to think that these setbacks could be redressed by increasing the size of the army and building more fortifications. Also, it gives us an idea of what it is like living a collapse "from the inside". Most people just don't see it happening - it is like being a fish: you don't see the water.

The situation seems to be the same with us: talking about the collapse of our civilization is reserved to a small bunch of catastrophists; you know them; ASPO members, or members of The Oil Drum - that kind of people. Incidentally, we can't rule out that at some moment at the time of the Roman Empire there was something like a "Roman ASPO", maybe "ASPE," the "association for the study of peak empire". If it ever existed, it left no trace. That may also happen with our ASPO; actually it is very likely, but let's go on.

While Rutilius Namatianus is not unimportant, it is also very well known that he exaggerates a lot. Yes, the situation was bad. But this is 416 we are talking about.

What destroyed the Roman Empire?

From our perspective we can see the cycle of the Roman Empire as one that is nicely complete. We can see it from start to end; from the initial expansion to the final collapse. As I said, a lot of documents and data have been lost but, still, we have plenty of information on the Empire - much more than for other past empires and civilizations that collapsed and disappeared as well. Yet, we don't seem to be able to find an agreement on the reasons of the collapse.

You have surely read Edward Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire"; at least parts of it. Gibbon wrote a truly monumental account of the story of the Empire, but he doesn't really propose us a "theory" of the causes of the fall, as most historians would do, later on. On reading Gibbon's work, you understand that he thinks there was a sort of loss of moral fiber in the Romans. He attributes this loss to the negative effect of Christianity. That is, the noble virtues of the Ancient Romans - he says - had been corrupted by this sect of fanatics coming from the East. This had made the Romans unable to resist to the invading barbarians.

You'll probably agree that this explanation by Gibbon is a bit limited; just as are limited other interpretations by authors who came later. Spengler and Tonybee are two examples, but if we were to discuss their work in detail it would take - well - weeks; not hours. So, let me jump forward to the historian who - I think - has given a new and original interpretation of the decline of Rome: Joseph Tainter with his "The Collapse of Complex Societies". His book was published for the first time in 1990.

It is a great book. I suggest to you to read it and ponder it. It is truly a mine of information about collapses. It doesn't deal just with the Roman Empire, but with many other civilizations. Tainter goes well beyond the simplistic interpretation of many earlier authors and identifies a key point in the question of collapse. Societies are complex entities; he understands that. And, hence, their collapse must be related to complexity. Here is an excerpt of Tainter's way of thinking. It is a transcription of a interview that Tainter gave in the film "Blind Spot" (2008)

In ancient societies that I studied, for example the Roman Empire, the great problem that they faced was when they would have to incur very high costs just to maintain the status quo. Invest very high amounts in solving problems that don't yield a net positive return, but instead simply allowed them to maintain what they already got. This decreases the net benefit of being a complex society.

Here is how Tainter describes his view in graphical form; in his book.

So, you see that Tainter has one thing very clear: complexity gives a benefit, but it is also a cost. This cost is related to energy, as he makes clear in his book. And in emphasizing complexity, Tainter gives us a good definition of what we intend for collapse. Very often people have been discussing the collapse of ancient societies without specifying what they meant for "collapse". For a while, there has been a school of thought that maintained that the Roman Empire had never really "collapsed". It had simply transformed itself into something else. But if you take collapse defined as "a rapid reduction of complexity" then you have a good definition and that's surely what happened to the Roman Empire.

So, what was important with the collapse of the Roman Empire is not whether or not there was an emperor in Rome (or, as it was the case later, in Ravenna). We might well imagine that the line of the emperors could have continued well after Romulus Augustulus - the last emperor. And even after him there remained a legitimate Roman Emperor in Byzantium, in the Eastern Empire. You could very well say that the Empire didn't disappear as long as there were emperors in Byzantium, that is, until Costantinople fell, in the 15th cenntury. And since the Russian Czars saw themselves as Roman emperors (that is where "Czar" comes from, from "Caesar"), you could say that the Roman Empire didn't disappear until the last Czar was deposed, in 1917. But that is not the point. The point is that the Roman Empire had started undergoing a catastrophic loss of complexity already during the third century. So, that was the real collapse. What happened later on is another story.

After that Tainter has spoken of complexity, and of the energy cost of complexity, it is perhaps surprising for us that he doesn't consider resource depletion as a cause of collapse. Resource depletion, after all, is the main theme of Jared Diamond's book "Collapse". It is how he interprets the collapse of many societies. Tainter explicitly denies that in his book. He says that if such a thing as depletion appears, then society should react against it. After all, it is normal: society always reacts to all kinds of crisis, and why shouldn't it react to resource depletion? This point made by Tainter may appear surprising - actually unpalatable - to people who have made resource depletion the centerpiece of their thought. Peak oilers, for instance.

The disagreement between peak oilers (and Diamond) and Tainter may not be so strong as it appears. That we'll see as we go deeper into the details. But before we do that, let me say something general about these explanations that people give for collapse. It happens all the time that people discover something that they describe as if it was the only cause for collapse. That is, they sort of get enamored of a single cause for collapse. They say, "I have the solution; it is this and nothing else."

Consider the story that Roman Empire collapse because the Romans used to drink wine in lead goblets; and so they died of lead poisoning. That has some truth: there is evidence of lead poisoning in ancient Roman skeletons; there are descriptions of lead poisoning in ancient Roman texts. Surely it was a problem, probably even a serious one. But you can't see this story of lead poisoning in isolation; otherwise you neglect everything else: the Roman Empire was not just people drinking wine in lead goblets. Think of a historian of the future who describes the fall of the American Empire as the result of Americans eating hamburgers. That would have some truth and for sure the kind of food that most Americans eat today is - well - we know that it is doing a lot of damage to the Americans in general. But you wouldn't say that hamburgers can be the cause of the fall of the American Empire. There is much more to that.

The same kind of reasoning holds for other "causes" that have been singled out for the fall of Rome. Think, for instance, of climatic change. Also here, there is evidence that the fall of the Roman Empire was accompanied by droughts. That may surely have been a problem for the Romans. But, again, we might fall in the same mistake of a future historian who might attribute the fall of the American Empire - say - to the hurricane Katrina.(I have nothing special against the American Empire, it is just that it is the current empire)

The point that Tainter makes, quite correctly, in his book is that it is hard to see the fall of such a complex thing as an empire as due to a single cause. A complex entity should fall in a complex manner, and I think it is correct. In Tainter's view, societies always face crisis and challenges of various kinds. The answer to these crisis and challenges is to build up structures - say, bureaucratic or military - in response. Each time a crisis is faced and solved, society finds itself with an extra layer of complexity. Now, Tainter says, as complexity increases, the benefit of this extra complexity starts going down - he calls it "the marginal benefit of complexity". That is because complexity has a cost - it costs energy to maintain complex systems. As you keep increasing complexity, this benefit become negative. The cost of complexity overtakes its benefit. At some moment, the burden of these complex structures is so great that the whole society crashes down - it is collapse.

I think that Tainter has understood a fundamental point, here. Societies adapt to changes. Indeed, one characteristic of complex systems is of adapting to changing external conditions. It is called "homeostasis" and I tend to see it as the defining characteristic of a complex system (as opposed to simply complicated). So, in general, when you deal with complex systems, you should not think in terms of "cause and effect" but, rather, in terms of "forcing and feedback". A forcing is something that comes from outside the system. A feedback is how the system reacts to a forcing, usually attaining some kind of homeostasis. Homeostasis, is a fundamental concept in system dynamics. Something acts on something else, but also that something else reacts. It is feedback. It may be positive (reinforcing) or negative (damping) and we speak of "feedback loops" which normally stabilize systems - within limits, of course.

Homeostasis has to be understood for what it is. It is not at all the same thing as "equilibrium" as it is defined in thermodynamics. For example, a human being is a complex system. When you are alive, you are in homeostasis. If you are in equilibrium, it means that you are dead. Homeostasis is a dynamical equilibrium of forces.

Something similar occurs for human societies. When there is a forcing, say, an epidemics that kills a lot of people, societies react by generating more children. Look at the demographic statistics for our societies: there is a dip in numbers for the world wars, but it is rapidly compensated by more births afterward. Also in Roman times there were epidemics and the eruption of the Vesuvius that killed a lot of people. But those were small forcings that the Roman society could compensate.

Not all forcings can be compensated, but we know that the Romans were not destroyed by an asteroid that fell into the Mediterranean Sea. It might have happened, and in that case there would have been no feedback able to keep the empire together. We would have a single cause for the disappearance of the Roman Empire and everybody would agree on that. But that has not happened, of course. Perhaps, something like that has happened to the Cretan civilization; destroyed by a volcanic eruption - but that's another story.

So, in Tainter's view there is this feedback relationship between complexity and energy. At least the way I interpret it. Complexity feeds on energy and also strains the availability of energy. It is feedback. And not just energy; resources in general. So, I think that Tainter is right in refusing a simple explanation like "resource depletion is the cause of the fall of the Roman Empire". But, clearly, resources are an important part of his model. I think Tainter had in mind the Roman Empire when he developed this model, but it is of quite general validity. If this is the way things stand, his model is not in contrast with the models we have that see resource depletion as the main factor that causes collapse. But not the only cause. We must see collapse as something dynamic, and now I'll try to explain just that.

This is all very well written, but I fail to see how it is applicable to the Roman Empire. It seems as if it sees the Roman Empire as a single entitiy that always confirmed to the same rules.

And, of course, it means that the regrowth of the empire in the fourth century is completely ignored. If Rome was more prosperous than before, then does that not mean the extra complexity was worth it? After all, it secured the arguably largest period of piece on the eastern frontier.

The dynamic fall of the Roman Empire

Now we know that we should expect to see these bell curves in the behavior of a complex civilization or an empire. So, we can try to give a look to the Roman Empire in this perspective and see if it agrees with an interpretation based on system dynamics. So, first of all, let me propose a simplified model based on the same scheme that Magne Myrtveit proposed for our world as described in "The Limits to Growth".

Please do not take it as anything more than a sketch, but it may be helpful for us to understand the mechanism that lead the Empire to collapse.

Now, let me try to explain how this scheme could work. We know that the Roman Empire was based mainly on two kinds of resources: military and agricultural. I put the image of a legionnaire for "capital resources" because legions can be seen as the capital of the Roman Empire; military capital. This capital, legions, would be built on a natural resource that was mainly gold. The legions didn't mine gold, they took it from the people who had mined it (or had stolen it from somebody else).

This feedback between military capital and gold is a point that is very well described by Tainter in his book. You can read how military adventures played a fundamental role in the growth of the empire, and earlier on of the Roman Republic. There was a clear case of positive feedback. The Empire would defeat a nearby kingdom, rob it of gold and take part of the population as slaves. Gold could be used to pay for more legions and go on conquering more lands. Positive feedback: the more legions you have, the more gold you can rob; the more gold you have, the more legions you can create. And so on...

One of the inventions of the Roman was their capability of transforming gold into legions and legions into gold - as I said it is a very clear case of feedback. Still today we use the word "soldier", which comes from Latin, and it means "hired" or "salaried". It was not only gold, legionnaires were also paid in silver, but the concept remains the same. Legions paid for the salaries of the legionnaires using the profit they made from looting the conquered lands.

But, as conquest proceeded, soon the Romans found themselves without easy lands to conquer. It was a problem of EROEI; energy return on energy invested. In this case, GROGI (gold return on gold invested). After the easy conquests of the 1st century b.c., Gallia for instance, then things became difficult. The energy yield of conquering new lands went down. On the North East, the Germans were too poor - and also warlike. Conquering them was not only difficult, but didn't generate a profit. In the East, the Parthians were rich, but militarily powerful. Then on the West there was the Atlantic Ocean, the North was too cold, the south too dry. Negative feedback, you see?

With the legions not bringing any more gold, gold disappeared from the Empire for various reasons. In part it was to buy luxury items that the Empire couldn't manufacture inside its borders, silk for instance. In part, it disappeared because barbarian chieftains were paid not to invade the Empire or to fight alongside with the Romans. There were other reasons, but anyway gold was a dwindling resource for the Roman Empire, a little like our "black gold", petroleum. During the good times, the legions would bring back from foreign conquests more gold than what was spent but, with time, the balance had become negative.

Of course, military conquest was not the only source of gold for Rome. As I said, we are describing a complex system, and complex systems have many facets. So, the Romans had gold mines in Africa and in Spain. And they also had silver mines in Spain. There are no mines in the scheme; we could add mines to it, that wouldn't be a problem. But the problem here is that we don't have enough data to understand exactly the role of mines in the economy of the Roman Empire. We know, for instance, that silver mining declined in Spain with the decline of the empire. Did mining decline cause the collapse of the empire? Personally, I think not. At least, the Romans had started their expansion much earlier than they had conquered Spain and these mines. At the time of the wars with Carthage, it was the Carthaginians who held Spain and, I imagine, the silver mines. But this silver didn't help them much, since they lost the war and were wiped out by the Romans. So, we should be wary of single explanations for complex events. We can only say that mines are subjected to the same kind of negative feedback that affects military conquests. After you exploit the easy ores (or lands to be conquered) you are left with difficult ores (or lands) that don't yield the same profit. It is negative feedback, again.

He makes several mistakes here. For example, there is no evidence earlier acquisitions paid off. For example, Gaul required a very heavy frontier defence, Britannia nearly always was a charity case, Dacia was not really worth it either.

Of course, he does once more ignore local examples - for example, the romans gaining control of Arabia and the spice trade, the romans expanding trade all the way to Sri Lanka and even further...and this happened all during the decline.

Nevermind that during the period in which he sees a decline, the Romans introduced pure gold coins that were to become the standard for several evidence. Who did that? Why it was Diocletian. In any case, his view of the relationship of gold and silver and the empire is far more complex than the simplistic model he uses.

There are also cases in which the influx of gold was a bad thing. For example, when the Parthian empire was crushed, the romans brought back massive amounts of plunder, which coinicidentally led to an inflation and in consequence of that, a debasement of the currency. Ergo, his model of gold=power is not really that good here.

Then, there was agriculture. Surely it was an important economic activity of the Roman Empire, as you can read, again, in Tainter's book. Agriculture is also subjected to positive and negative feedbacks as you can see in the scheme. With good agriculture, the population increases. With more population, you can have more farmers. In the case of the Roman Empire, as population grows, you can have also more legions which will bring back home slaves which can be put to work in the fields. But agriculture has also a negative feedback, and that is erosion.

You can see erosion in the scheme listed as "pollution". It affects agriculture negatively. It reduces population and sets everything backwards: negative feedback, again. The more you try to force agriculture to support a large populations (including the legions) the more strain you put on the fertile soil. Fertile soil is a non renewable resource; it takes centuries to reform the fertile soil, after that it has been lost. So, erosion destroys agriculture, population falls, you have a smaller number of legions and, in the end, you are invaded by barbarians. This is another negative feedback loop that is related to the fall of the Roman Empire.

The question of agriculture during Roman times is rather complex ad the data we have are contradictory; at least in some respects. There is clear evidence of erosion and deforestation, especially during the expansion period of the early Roman Empire. Then, during and after the third century, we have famines and plagues. These two things are related, plagues are often the result of poor nutrition. At the same time, we have evidence that the Romans of the late empire were unable to exploit in full the land they had. It is reported that plenty of land was not cultivated - apparently for lack of manpower. We also know that forests were returning with the 4th century a.d. So, there are various elements of the dynamic scheme which connect with each other. Apparently, the emphasis on military power took away resources from agriculture and ingenerated still another negative feedback: not enough people (or slaves) to cultivate the land. But it may also be that some areas of land were not cultivated because erosion had ruined them.

So, I have proposed to you a scheme and I described how it could work. But does it work? We should now compare the scheme with real data; fit the data to a model. The problem is that we don't have enough data to fit - we probably never will. So, I didn't try fitting anything; but I think I can show you some sets of data that are an impressive indication that there is something true in this dynamical model.

First of all, if the decline and fall of the Roman Empire has been a case of overexploitation of resources, we should expect to see bell curves for industrial and agricultural production, for population, and for other parameters. As I said, the historical data are scant, but we have archaeological data. So, let me show a plot that summarizes several industrial and agricultural indicators, together with a graph that shows how the extension of the Empire varied in time. It is taken from In search of Roman economic growth, di W. Scheidel, 2007" The other graph is taken from Tainter's book.

Actually, just using a single graph from Scheidel is not really that good of an argument. If you look at Scheidel, he proposes several other graphs that show the roman economy going through a series of growths and recessions, with a lot of indicators showing a strong roman economy in the third century. One should not just take a look at one graph and not post the others. Declaring peak gold is also not really helpful here.

Especially the upper graph is impressive. There has been a "peak-empire", at least in terms of production and agriculture, somewhere around mid 1st century. Afterward, there was a clear decline - it was not just a political change. It was also a real reduction in complexity as Tainter defines collapse. The Roman Empire really collapsed in mid 3rd century. It had a sort of "Hubbert peak" at that time.

...and of course this has everything to do with resources instead of civil wars, right?

This model is not really a good model IMO.

The other parameter shown in the figure, the extension of the empire, also shows an approximately bell shaped curve. The Empire continued to exist as a political entity even after it had been reduced to an empty shell in economic terms. If we think that the extension of the empire is proportional to the "capital" accumulated, then this relationship makes sense if we think of the dynamic model that we saw before. Capital, as we saw, should peak after production. This is a bit stretched as an interpretation, I admit. But at least we see also here a bell shaped curve.

And here it happens. Why ignore the rest of what Scheidel writes? It really is not helpful. Why ignore the signs of recovery in Africa and the east? Why do that in favor of a single "peak oil gold" model?

There is more. Do you remember the curves that are calculated in the dynamic model for the relation Capital/resources? You expect the production curve to peak before the capital curve. Now, I proposed that this relation capital/resources exists between the Roman Army and the gold that they looted. So, do we have data that show this relationship? Yes, we do, although only approximately. Let's first see the data for gold. We don't have data for the amount of gold circulating within the Empire, but Tainter shows us the data for the devaluation of the Roman silver coin, which we would expect to follow the same path. Here are the data (the figure is taken from this site ):

Now, the amount of precious metal within a denarius is not a precise measurement of the total gold or silver in the Empire, but it is at least an indication that this amount was going down after the first century A.D. And, since the Romans had started poor, earlier on, there must have been a peak at some time, "peak gold", probably in the 1st century a.d.

Or...there are other reasons for that, which you neglect to mention? Maybe inflation with which the silver mines could not keep up?

About the size of the Roman Army, we have this figure from Wikipedia . As you see, the data are uncertain, but if we consider the Western Empire only, there was a peak around 3rd century a.d.

So, you see? Army and gold show the correct relationship that we expect to have between capital and resource. they both peak, but gold peaks before the army. The Romans kept increasing the size of their army even after the economic returns that they got from military activities went down, actually may have become negative. It is exactly the same behavior of whalers in 19th century who kept increasing the size of the whaling fleet even it was clear that there weren't enough whales to catch to justify that. I think this is an impressive result. At least, it convinced me.

Oh, good lord. The size of the roman army in the fourth and fith century was a) dictated by military needs and therefore not really negotiable and b) not really that much of a problem, seeing the enormous riches spent elsewhere.

Furthermore, there is a lot of discussion on this subject. The number of military men is by no means clear.

There is more if we look at the Roman population curve, although for this we must rely on very uncertain data (see, e.g. the paper by Walter Schneidel . I can't show you a graph, here, too uncertain are the data. But it seems that, in any case, there was a population peak in the Roman Empire around mid 2nd century. If this is the case, the Roman population peak arrives after the production peak - just as shown in the "standard run" calculations for the world3 model.

So, I think we have enough data, here, to prove the validity of the model - at least in qualitative terms. Maybe somebody should collect good data, archaeological and historical, and made a complete dynamic model of the Roman Empire. That would be very interesting, but it is beyond my possibilities for now. Anyway, even from these qualitative data we should be able to understand why the Empire was in trouble. One of the main causes of the trouble was that it had this big military apparatus, the legions, that needed to be paid and didn't bring in any profit. It was the start of an hemorrhage of gold that couldn't be reversed. In addition, the Empire bled itself even more by building an extensive system of fortifications - the limes that had to be maintained and manned, besides being expensive in themselves.

The limes was not really that expensive. I would love to see where he gets his numbers from.

The story of the fortifications is a good example of what we had said; the attempt of a complex system to maintain homeostasis. The Romans must have understood that legions were too expensive if you had to keep so many of them to keep the borders safe. So, they built these walls. I imagine that the walls were built by slaves; and a slave surely cost less than a legionnaire.

His imagination is commendable, but I would love to see some evidence for that assertion. Legionnaires built the fortifications.

Slaves, however, were not good as fighters - I suppose that if you gave a sword to a slave he might think to run away or to use it against you. You know the story of Spartacus, the leader of a slave revolt in Roman times. I am sure that the Romans didn't want to risk that again. But with walls the Romans had found a way to replace legionnaires with slaves. You needed less legionnaires to defend a fortification than to defend an open field. That was a way to save money, to keep homeostasis. But it wasn't enough - obviously. The Romans still needed to pay for the legions and - as a disadvantage - the walls were a rigid system of defense that couldn't be changed. The Romans were forced to man the walls all along their extension and that must have been awfully expensive. The Empire had locked itself in a cage from which it would never be able to escape. Negative feedback kills.

Know he decends into wackoo land. I would love to see his evidence for a static fortification system that was a detriment to the empire.

Military expenses were not the only cause of the fall. With erosion gnawing at agricultural yields and mine productivity going down, we should not be surprised if the empire collapsed. It simply couldn't do otherwise. So, you see that the collapse of the Roman Empire was a complex phenomenon where different negative factors reinforced each other. It was a cascade of negative feedbacks, not a single one, that brought down the empire. And this shows how closely related to the Romans we are.

And here the true objective of the talk reveals itself - it shows itself as yet another attempt to equivocate the Roman empire with the Western World of today. Do you know how sick I am of this unscientific approach?

Surely there are differences: our society is more of a mining society and less of a military based society. We don't use slaves but, rather, machines. We also have plenty of gadgets that the Romans didn't have. But, in the end, the interactions of the various elements of our economy are not that much different. What brought down the Romans, and eventually will bring us down, is the overexploitation of the resources.

Reaallly. It possible could not have been due to political disunity, devestating civil wars and barbarian hordes and the biggest movement of peoples in European history? Naaah.

If the Romans could have found a way to use their resources, agriculture for instance, in ways that didn't destroy them, erosion in this case, their society could have lasted for a longer time. But they never found an equilibrium point - they went down always using a bit too much of what they had.

Yeah, right. Which is why the cities growed until the civil wars...and then continued to grow...

Reality has a well known anti-populist bias.

Avoiding Collapse
From our viewpoint, we see what was the history of the Roman Empire. But, from inside, as we saw, it wasn't clear at all.

Maybe because it wasn't the case?

But let's assume that someone had it clear, already at the time of Marcus Aurelius. I said that there might have been something like an ASPE; "association for the study of peak empire". Or let's imagine that a wise man, a Druid from foggy Britannia, an ancestor of Merlin the wise, was smart enough to figure out what was going on. You don't really need computers to make dynamical models, or maybe this druid made one using wooden cogs and wheels, the whole thing powered by slaves. So, let's say that this druid understood that the troubles of the Empire are caused by a combination of negative feedbacks and that these feedbacks come from the cost of the army and of the bureaucracy, the overexploitation of the fertile soil, the fact that Rome had exhausted the "easy" targets for conquest.

Now, it is a tradition of Druids (and also of ASPO) of alerting kings and rulers of the dangers ahead. After all, Merlin did that for King Arthur and we may imagine that the druid we are thinking of felt that it was his duty to do that with Emperor Marcus Aurelius. So, he decides to go to Rome and speak to the Emperor. Suppose you were that druid; what would you say to the Emperor?

Seeing as the romans repressed the druid religion and executed a lot of druids on sight, probably very little. Or AAAAARGH as the Praetorians removed the head of your shoulders.

Good question, right? I have asked it to myself many times. We could think of many ways of answering it. For instance, if gold is running out from the Empire's coffers, why not suggest to the Emperor to mount a naval expedition to the Americas? It is what Columbus would do, more than a millennium afterwards and the result was the Spanish empire - it was also based on gold and it didn't last for long. Maybe the Romans could have done something like that. But they didn't have the right technology to cross the oceans and, at the time of Marcus Aurelius, they had run out of the resources to develop it. So, they had to remain in Europe and to come to terms with the limits of the area they occupied. The Empire had to return its economy within these limits. So, there is only one thing that you, as the wise Druid from Britannia, can tell the Emperor: you have to return within the limits that the Empire's economy can sustain.

So you walk to Rome - kind of a long walk from Eburacum, in Britannia; a place that today we call "York". You are preceded by your fame of wise man and so the Emperor receives you in his palace. You face him, and you tell him what you have found:

"Emperor, the empire is doomed. If you don't do something now, it will collapse in a few decades"

The Emperor is perplexed, but he is a patient man. He is a philosopher after all. So he won't have your head chopped off right away, as other emperors would, but he asks you, "But why, wise druid, do you say that?"

"Emperor, " you say, "you are spending too much money for legions and fortifications.

....which did not really exist during the time of Marcus Aurelius. But please, do not let get those pesky things called facts in the way of your story...

The gold accumulated in centuries of conquests is fast disappearing and you can't pay enough legionnaires to defend the borders. In addition, you are putting too much strain on agriculture: the fertile soil is being eroded and lost. Soon, there won't be enough food for the Romans. And, finally, you are oppressing people with too much bureaucracy, which is also too expensive."

LMAO. Do you know how many civil servants the entire roman empire had under Diocletian and Constantine, when bureaucracy was the most expanded?

The number was around 30.000. Yes, that is right. 30.000 civil servants for an empire that had at least 50 million members,

Expensive bureaucracy, yeah right.

Again, the Emperor considers having your head chopped off, but he doesn't order that. You have been very lucky in hitting on a philosopher-emperor. So he asks you, "Wise druid, there may be some truth in what you say, but what should I do?"

"Emperor, first you need to plant trees. the land needs rest. In time, trees will reform the fertile soil."
"But, druid, if we plant trees, we won't have enough food for the people."
"Nobody will starve if the patricians renounce to some of their luxuries!"
"Well, Druid, I see your point but it won't be easy....."
"And you must reduce the number of legions and abandon the walls!"
"But, but.... Druid, if we do that, the barbarians will invade us....."
"It is better now than later. Now you can still keep enough troops to defend the cities. Later on, it will be impossible. It is sustainable defense."
"Sustainable?"
"Yes, it means defense that you can afford. You need to turn the legions into city militias and..."
"And...?"
"You must spend less for the Imperial Bureaucracy. The Imperial taxes are too heavy! You must work together with the people, not oppress them! Plant trees, disband the army, work together!"

Now, Emperor Marcus Aurelius seriously considers whether it is appropriate to have your head chopped off, after all. Then, since he is a good man, he sends to you back to Eburacum under heavy military escort, with strict orders that you should never come to Rome again.

So in short, the response to a plague is to abandon all things that made the empire roman. Yeah, disbanding legions and walls is so going to help you when barbarians come knocking.

In short, what the author demands from the Roman empire is national suicide.

This is a little story about something that never happened but that closely mirrors what happened to the modern druids who were the authors of "The Limits to Growth." They tried to tell to the world's rulers of their times something not unlike what our fictional druid tried to tell to Emperor Marcus Aurelius. The heads of the authors of "The Limits to Growth" weren't chopped off, but they were surely "academically decapitated" so to say. They were completely ignored. Not just ignored, ridiculed and vituperated. It is not easy to be a druid.

So, here we found another similarity between our times and the Roman ones. We are subjected to the "fish in the water" curse. We don't understand that we are surrounded by water. And we don't want to be told that water exists.

As things stands, we seem to be blithely following the same path that the Roman Empire followed. Our leaders are unable to understand complex systems and continue to implement solutions that worsen the problem. As the wise druid was trying to tell to Marcus Aurelius, building walls to keep the barbarians out was a loss of resources that was worse than useless. But I can see the politicians of the time running on a platform that said, "Keep the barbarians out! More walls to defend the empire". It is the same for us. Tell a politician that we are in trouble with crude oil and he/she will immediately say "drill deeper!" or "drill, baby, drill!" Negative feedback kills.

But I would like to point out to you something: let's go back to what our fictional druid was telling to Emperor Aurelius. He had this slogan "Plant trees, disband the army and work together". I had invented it in a post that I had written on the collapse of Tuscan society in 16th century; it is another story but one that shows how all societies follow similar paths. Anyway, can you see what kind of world the Druid was proposing to the Emperor? Think about that for a moment: a world of walled cities defended by city militias, no central authority or a weak one, an economy based on agriculture.

Do you see it.....? Sure, it is Middle Ages! Think about that for a moment and you'll see that you could define Middle Ages as a solution for the problems of the Roman Empire!

If by solution you mean kill the majority of the populace, abandon civilization and fragment the empire into thousands of little fiefdoms, coinciding with the total breakdown of law and order.

Only to have the persians sweep in and conquer the empire and turn it into another superstate.

It was where the Empire was going and where it could not avoid going. What the Druid was proposing was to go there in a controlled way. Ease the transition, don't fight it! If you know where you are going, you can travel in style and comfort. If you don't, well, it will be a rough ride.

We may imagine a hypothetical "driven transition" in which the government of the Roman Empire at the time of Marcus Aurelius would have done exactly that: abandon the walls, reduce the number of legion and transform them into city militias, reduce bureaucracy and Imperial expenses, delocalize authority, reduce the strain on agriculture: reforest the land. The transition would not have been traumatic and would have involved a lower loss of complexity: books, skills, works of art and much more could have been saved and passed to future generations.

The author fails to understand that those books, skills, works of art etc. would not have been passed on because there was no need or no opportunity for them to be sustainable.

All that is, of course, pure fantasy. Even for a Roman Emperor, disbanding the legions couldn't be easy. After all, the name "Emperor" comes from the Latin word "imperator" that simply means "commander". The Roman Emperor was a military commander and the way to be Emperor was to please the legions that the Emperor commanded. A Roman Emperor who threatened to disband the legions wouldn't have been very popular and, most likely, he was to be a short lived Emperor. So, Emperors couldn't have done much even if they had understood system dynamics. In practice, they spent most of their time trying to reinforce the army by having as many legions as they could. Emperors, and the whole Roman world, fought as hard as they could to keep the status quo ante , to keep things as they had always been. After the 3rd century crisis, Emperor Diocletian resurrected the Empire transforming it into something that reminds us of the Soviet Union at the time of Breznev. An oppressive dictatorship that included a suffocating bureaucracy, heavy taxes for the citizens, and a heavy military apparatus. It was such a burden for the Empire that it destroyed it utterly in little more than a century.

The author is an ignoramus and neglects the empire of the east. The entire paragraph about the late roman empire reveals an astonishing lack of knowledge. suffocating bureaucracy, yeah right. 30.000 servants at the peak of it = suffocating.

The author also fails to understand that the roman economy in the fourth century was not at all collapsing.

[Thanas]

*continued due to character limit*

Our Druids may be better than those of the times of the Roman Empire, at least they have digital computers. But our leaders are no better apt at understanding complex system than the military commanders who ruled the Roman Empire. Even our leaders were better, they would face the same problems: there are no structures that can gently lead society to where it is going. We have only structures that are there to keep society where it is - no matter how difficult and uncomfortable it is to be there. It is exactly what Tainter says: we react to problems by building structure that are more and more complex and that, in the end, produce a negative return. That's why societies collapse.

So, all our efforts are to keep the status quo ante . For this reason we are so desperately looking for something that can replace crude oil and leave everything else the same. It has to be something that is liquid, that burns and, if possible, even smells bad. Drill more, drill deeper, boil tar sands, make biofuels even if people will starve. We do everything we can to keep things as they are.

And, yet, we are going where the laws of physics are taking us. A world with less crude oil, or with no crude oil at all, cannot be the same world we are used to, but it doesn't need to be the Middle Ages again. If we manage to deploy new sources of energy, renewable or nuclear - fast enough to replace crude oil and the other fossil fuels, we can imagine that the transition would not involve a big loss of complexity, perhaps none at all. More likely, a reduced flux of energy and natural resources in the economic system will entail the kind of collapse described in the simulations of "The Limits to Growth." We can't avoid to go where the laws of physics are taking us.

Conclusion: showdown at Teutoburg
Two thousand years ago, three Roman legions were annihilated in the woods of Teutoburg by a coalition of tribes of the region that the Romans called "Germania". Today, after so many years, the woods of the region are quiet and peaceful places, as you can see in this picture

It is hard for us to imagine what the three days of folly of the battle of Teutoburg must have been. The legions surprised by the ambush of the Germans, their desperate attempt to retreat: under heavy rain and strong winds in the woods, they never were able to form a line and fight as they were trained to. One by one, almost all of them were killed; their general, Varus, committed suicide. The Germans left the bodies rotting in the woods as a sort of sacred memory to the battle. The ultimate disgrace for the legions was the loss of their sacred standards. It was such a disaster that it led to the legend that Emperor Augustus would wander at night in his palace screaming "Varus, give me back my legions!"

I think we could pause for a moment and remember these men, Germans and Romans, who fought so hard and died. We have seen so many similarity between our world and the Roman one that we may feel something that these men felt as well.

Ahem. "Similarities" indeed.

Why did they fight, why did they die? I think that many of them fought because they were paid to fight. Others because their commander or their chieftain told them so. But, I am sure, a good number of them had some idea that they were fighting for (or against) the abstract concept that was the Roman Empire. Some of them must have felt that they stood for defending civilization against barbarians, others for defending their land against evil invaders.

Two millennia after the battle of Teutoburg, we can see how useless it was that confrontation in the woods soaked with rain. A few years later, the Roman general Germanicus, nephew of Emperor Tiberius, went back to Teutoburg with no less than eight legions. He defeated the Germans, recovered the standards of the defeated legions, and buried the bodies of the Roman dead. Arminius, the German leader who had defeated Varus, suffered a great loss of prestige and, eventually, he was killed by his own people. But all that changed nothing. The Roman Empire had exhausted its resources and couldn't expand any more.

Britannica, Dacia, Parthica, Osrhoene, Arabia, Africa and the Crimea apparently do not count.

Civilizations and empires, in the end, are just ripples in the ocean of time. They come and go, leaving little except carved stones proclaiming their eternal greatness. But, from the human viewpoint, Empires are vast and long standing and, for some of us, worth fighting for or against. But those who fought in Teutoburg couldn't change the course of history, nor can we.

Because, you see, clearly the defeat at Teutoburg was due to an unstoppable force of nature instead of an ambush by one of the best commanders of antiquity.

All that we can say - today as at the time of the battle of Teutoburg - is that we are going towards a future world that we can only dimly perceive. If we could see clearly where we are going, maybe we wouldn't like to go there; but we are going anyway. In the end, perhaps it was Emperor Marcus Aurelius who had seen the future most clearly:

Nature which governs the whole will soon change all things which thou seest, and out of their substance will make other things, and again other things from the substance of them, in order that the world may be ever new.

Marcus Aurelius Verus - "Meditations" ca. 167 A.D.

Nice ending. I like the Meditations. Too bad that there is nothing futuristic about that quote.

[Stark]

I don't understand how 'allow the empire to collapse deliberately or in a controlled fashion' = 'solve anything'. If doing what he suggests would result in the barbarians penetrating the borders, fragmenting the empire etc (as he himself says), what's the point? The empire existed for centuries after this point, so isn't that better than deliberately demolishing it in the name of 'sustainability'?

[Thanas]

I don't understand how 'allow the empire to collapse deliberately or in a controlled fashion' = 'solve anything'. If doing what he suggests would result in the barbarians penetrating the borders, fragmenting the empire etc (as he himself says), what's the point? The empire existed for centuries after this point, so isn't that better than deliberately demolishing it in the name of 'sustainability'?

Yes. It really boggles the mind. I made that point above as well and also pointed out there is another thing to consider - if he downsizes the empire that far, there is no need for it to have an advanced culture anymore as this advanced culture is tied to the cities. So there is no benefit in doing so either - it would not save any more people (most likely, the lack of defence would cause in massive invasions, ergo a far more massive loss of life than happened in the OTL), nor would it help to preserve the culture (which coincidentally was preserved in the heavily militarized east with an "oppressive bureuacracy" and a massive dependancy on gold), nor would it do anything than hasten the arrival of the dark ages.

So in short, his whole point is self-defeating. It is akin to suggesting that I tear down my house and lay out my valuables in the hope the jewel thieves will only take a few of them.